1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to displaying advertisements to viewers of video programming. In particular, the present invention is directed to methods and systems for selecting and inserting advertisements into a video programming feed at the household level.
2. The Prior State of the Art
A major source of revenue for commercial television broadcasters is the sale of broadcast time to advertisers. Advertising is the main source of income for national television broadcasters and their local over-the-air affiliates. Likewise, cable networks derive their income from a combination of the sale of advertising time and the receipt of cable subscription fees. Advertising revenue is a leading factor in the currently available diverse selection of commercial television programming.
Advertisers have typically attempted to maximize the return on their advertising investment by targeting specific viewer segments that are likely to be most receptive to the commercial message embodied in the advertisements. One of the most widespread and simplest ways of targeting viewers involves identifying what types of viewers are associated with specific television programs. For example, it may be found that sports programming is viewed by a segment of the population that includes a disproportionate number of persons who are likely to purchase automobiles. In another example, it may be found that news programs are viewed most frequently by persons who are more interested in investment services than the public at large.
Advertisers offering goods or services that coincide with the interests of the viewers of a particular program are usually willing to pay a premium for advertising time associated with the program. Accordingly, broadcasters have a financial incentive to provide programming that is easily associated with specific segments of the viewing population and to facilitate the identification of the profiles of viewers.
Another method of targeting specific viewing audiences involves selecting advertisements according to the geographical region in which they are to be broadcast. Frequently, viewers in one local or regional area may be more likely to be receptive to an advertiser""s message than viewers in a different area. For example, some advertisements are presented by businesses operating in a limited geographical area. Accordingly, advertising success and the advertising revenues received by broadcasters are maximized when different advertisements may be broadcast to different geographical areas.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional example of a system for selectively broadcasting different advertisements to households in different geographical regions. A typical broadcasting system includes content providers 10 that distribute television programming to households 12, 14, and 16. In this example, content providers 10 include a national broadcaster 18, which is one of the national television broadcasting networks. Each national broadcaster 18 typically provides programming, including advertisements 20, to a plurality of local affiliates 22, 24, and others scattered across the country.
Local affiliates 22 and 24 contractually agree with national broadcaster 18 to provide the broadcasting equipment and services for distributing the programming of national broadcaster 18 to a local or regional area. In compensation for broadcasting the programming, national broadcaster 18 allows local affiliates 22 and 24 to sell and broadcast local advertisements 26 and 28. In this example, it is to be understood that local affiliate 22 serves a different geographical region than local affiliate 24. Accordingly, many of the advertisements 26 broadcast by local affiliate 22 are likely to be different than the advertisements 28 broadcast by local affiliate 24. Such geographical differentiation of advertisements is often of great interest to advertisers. Local advertisers may find it cost-effective to purchase advertising time from local affiliate 22 or 24 in order to specifically target local viewers, while it would be impractical to purchase an advertisement 20 for national distribution. In this conventional approach to selling advertisement time, the contractual arrangement between national broadcaster 18 and local affiliates 22 and 24 ordinarily attempt to strike a balance between local advertisements 26 and 28 and national advertisements 20 in order to maximize overall advertising income.
Another important segment of the television broadcast industry involves cable networks 30, which are generally not associated with local affiliates. Instead, cable networks 30 distribute their programming to cable providers 32 by means of satellite or other communication systems. Cable networks 30 sell advertising time to national advertisers generally in a similar manner as national broadcaster 18. Accordingly, the typical advertisement 34 broadcast by cable network 30 is targeted to the national viewing audience. As a financial incentive to encourage cable providers 32 to make the programming of cable network 30 available to cable subscribers (i.e., household 16), cable network 30 often designates selected time slots that may be sold to local advertisers by the cable provider. Thus, many cable providers insert local advertisements 36 into the programming of cable networks 30.
Frequently, the geographical area served by a cable provider 32 is significantly smaller than the geographical area served by a local affiliate 22 or 24. Accordingly, the advertisements 36 distributed by cable provider 32 may be targeted to relatively small geographically areas, such as a specific city.
The effects of the conventional distribution of advertising time between local and national advertisers may be more fully understood by considering the system of FIG. 1 from the standpoint of viewers in households 12, 14, and 16. In this example, it is assumed that household 12 is in a first geographical region served by local affiliate 22 while households 14 and 16 are in a second geographical region served by local affiliate 24. Furthermore, household 16 is in a specific city served by cable provider 32 within the second geographical region. In this example, a viewer in household 12 receives advertisements 20 from national broadcaster 18 and advertisements 26 from local affiliate 22. Household 14 receives the same advertisements 20 from national broadcaster 18 but receives advertisements 28 that are specifically targeted to the second geographical region served by local affiliate 24. Household 16 also receives advertisements 20 from national broadcaster 18 and advertisements 28 from local affiliate 24. In addition, household 16 receives national advertisements 34 from cable network 30 and local advertisements 36 from cable provider 32.
FIG. 2A illustrates a conventional system whereby a local affiliate inserts local advertisements into a video programming feed received from a national broadcaster. In FIG. 2A, a series of advertisements 20 are included at a predetermined time in programming feed 38 by the national broadcaster 18 of FIG. 1. According to the contractual agreement between the national broadcaster 18 and local affiliate 24, the national broadcaster includes in the programming feed 38 an occasional time slot 40 that is filled by local advertisements 28 sold to advertisers by the local affiliate.
FIG. 2B illustrates a conventional system whereby a cable provider inserts local advertisements into a video programming feed received from a national broadcaster. In this example, cable network 30 broadcasts a series of advertisements 34 at a predetermined time in its programming feed 39. According to the contractual agreement between the cable provider 32 and the cable network 30, the cable provider is given the option of inserting advertisements 36 into specified time slots 42 in programming feed 39. Because cable providers ordinarily broadcast a large number of channels, many cable providers are unable to sell all the advertising time that is made available by the cable networks. For this reason, cable networks typically broadcast a national advertisement 34 during the specified time slots 42 in recognition that the cable provider may not insert an advertisement 36.
The foregoing systems have been used profitably by advertisers and the television broadcast industry. Advertising revenues are largely responsible for the wide range of television choices currently available to the viewing public. However, even with the widespread practice of targeting viewers based on television programming content and the practice of geographically differentiating advertisements, viewers who are likely to be disinterested in the goods or services offered by advertisers unavoidably constitute a large percentage of the viewing population. For example, even though it may be found that viewers of sports programming are collectively more likely to purchase automobiles, a large number of individual viewers in this segment of the viewing population simply are not interested in such purchases. Likewise, while viewers of news programs may be more interested as a whole in investment services than the general public, a large number of such viewers belong to age or economic segments of the population that traditionally do not make use of investment services. In view of these and many other examples, conventional methods and systems for targeting advertisements to specific groups of viewers are inefficient.
Conventional systems for delivering advertisements to viewers fail to provide accurate feedback mechanisms for gauging viewer response. As seen in FIG. 1, delivery and display of advertisements of advertisements in households 12, 14, and 16 is essentially one-way communication from the advertiser to the viewer. The advertiser is generally unable to determine whether its advertisements have reached the desired segment of the viewing population or whether they have been effective. At most, advertisers are able to monitor business activity before and after a particular advertising campaign or to initiate a direct survey to learn of viewers"" perceptions of advertisements. Such approaches are likely to be expensive and inconclusive.
In view of the foregoing, it can be understood that there is a need in the art for systems and methods for more specifically targeting viewers in order to tailor advertisements to the interests and needs of the viewers. Because of the financial incentives involved, both content providers and advertisers would be interested in improved systems for directing television advertisements to interested viewers. A system for selecting advertisements at a more local level than has previously been possible would be a great advancement in the art. Furthermore, it would be advantageous to provide a system for delivering and displaying advertisements wherein the response of the viewers may be accurately measured.
The present invention is directed to methods and systems for inserting advertisements or other video or visually displayed objects into video programming feeds at the household level. The method of invention allows advertisers to target individual viewers based on the needs and interests of individual viewers and households. Advertisement selection and insertion at the household level greatly increases the efficiency of television advertising.
According to one aspect of the method of the invention, a conventional video programming feed is displayed to a viewer. Either before or during the display of the video programming feed to the viewer, a plurality of advertisements from an advertisement source are received by a home entertainment system in the household. The received advertisements are either stored in an advertisement repository for later display or are made available to the home entertainment system at an appropriate time for immediate display.
At least some identifying characteristics of the viewer, the content of the video programming, the geographical location of the household, or other factors, are compiled and are used in combination with designated ad selection criteria in order to select for display an appropriate advertisement. The selected advertisement is appropriate in the sense that it is specifically associated with characteristics of the viewer or the household. Many of the criteria for selecting appropriate advertisements allow targeting of segments of the viewing population in ways that are more efficient and reliable than have been possible before the invention.
During display of the video programming feed, an appropriate time for displaying a selected advertisement to the viewer is indicated by a triggering event. Typically, the appropriate time coincides with advertisements that are originally carried on the video programming feed. The triggering event may be a signal carried in the video programming feed, implied by the timewise structure by the video programming feed, or based on an external mechanism, such as information contained in an electronic program guide. At the appropriate time indicated by the triggering event, the video programming feed is interrupted and the selected advertisement is displayed to the viewer using a display screen of the home entertainment system. In effect, the advertisement originally carried on the video programming feed is overwritten with the selected advertisement. Upon termination of the advertisement, the video programming feed is again displayed to the viewer.
According to one embodiment of the invention, the method includes monitoring the response of the viewer to the selected advertisement. For example, information relating to the viewer response may be stored in the home entertainment system and may be periodically transmitted to a clearinghouse, where the information is made available to the advertisers, the operator of the advertising source, or other interested parties. Thus, the invention allows potentially valuable viewer feedback to be compiled. The viewer response information may allow the advertisers to further modify the content of their advertisements or to change the advertisement selection criteria so as to communicate more effectively to viewers. This can be done by extending the system to include an automatic feedback loop that selects ads based on rules set by the advertiser.
The invention allows advertisements to be more efficiently tailored to the needs and interests of individual viewers than has been previously possible. The advertiser realizes benefits from the invention by maximizing the effectiveness of its efforts of targeting interested viewers. The invention allows the operator of the advertisement source and/or the content providers to increase advertising revenue and to more effectively compete in the advertising market because advertisers are generally willing to pay for the increased advertisement targeting efficiency. Finally, the viewing public benefits by being exposed to consumer information that is more relevant to their needs and interests than has been possible under conventional advertising systems.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by the practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. These and other objects and features of the present invention will become more fully apparent from the following description and appended claims, or may be learned by the practice of the invention as set forth hereinafter.